Jani Hovila
Change and uncertainty. These are the words I'm reflecting on as I write our first newsletter to you this year, and for 3 key reasons.
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1. Companies restructuring and trying to get “in line” with the changes in the market
We have already witnessed major changes affecting CMOs across our clients and in the companies we monitor:
- Carve-outs to focus on strategic initiatives
- The start of a whole organizational restructuring, pausing almost every major development project for the time being
- Cost-saving initiatives and layoffs affecting marketing budgets and, in some cases FTEs
2. Resources are staying the same or decreasing
We see the challenge coming from a budgetary standpoint as well. We asked our Q4 CMO Roundtable attendees in Helsinki, Stockholm, and Copenhagen about marketing investment. Only 2 mentioned that their budget is growing this year compared to 2025. That's 2 out of 20.
The positive news is that most mentioned the budget will stay around the same and not decrease. However, the sentiment is that there are more expectations tied to that budget. That is why our Q1 theme will be around the idea: “More with less or the same,” and how a CMO can actually achieve that. Read more about Roundtables here.
3. Even in times of uncertainty and change, some trends keep going
There are multiple trends affecting our marketing profession in complex B2B, posing both opportunities and threats for our profession.
Changes in buyer behavior, hybrid selling models, changes in business models, the rise of the digital buyer (millennials & Gen Z as B2B buyers), and, of course, AI and its widespread effects.
From a marketing function standpoint, we see trends like the marketing department shifting under sales and losing its management team position, an increased need to prove actual business value, more emphasis put on positioning and market awareness (branding, if I may), and quite surprisingly, questions around the sanity of lead generation.
Of course, change and uncertainty are nothing new; we have witnessed them in some aspect or another ever since COVID-19 (which was already six years ago).
SWOT for B2B marketing in complex industries
We use SWOT in our own Quarterly and Yearly sessions to discover where to focus on. Here is a SWOT of how we currently see the landscape around the marketing function and you as a marketing leader.
Our main goal for the remainder of Q1, and as always, will be to arm you with insights and tools to navigate 2026 successfully and emerge as a stronger marketing function in the end.
Topics and areas we are focusing on for Q1 to achieve this:
- Playbook to deliver more impact with less or with the same resources
- Identify big-bet value streams that impact short-term results
- Help you identify the core foundation pieces that help you build a strong position internally for marketing, no matter the trend curves and business cycles
Have a great week,
-JH-
Ps. If you want to hear what we learned last year from 43 assessments with complex B2B CMOs in the Nordics, join our webinar on the 4th of February.
We had these 360 interview-based assessments where we reviewed with the CMO:
- Marketing & Business Alingment
- CMO Clarity towards your marketing function
- Value Creation and Investment Roadmap
- Marketing Value Communication
- Marketing Department Operational Excellence
In the webinar, I will:
- Share our main findings
- Share some identified detractors and enablers for a more strategic role that you probably also have
- And some of our ideas on how to utilize these 2026
